Tag Archives: Hayling Island

70 years ago today the people of Portsmouth were coming to terms with the aftermath of the most devastating bombing raid on the city during the Second World War. The anniversary was marked yesterday by a service at the city’s Anglican Cathederal, a ceremony in the Guildhall Square, and the unveiling of a placque to victims in Old Portsmouth.

Even before the Second World War the Luftwaffe had identified Portsmouth as an important target. Luftwaffe target maps in Portsmouth Central Library show that aircrew were shown the location of the dockyard (including the various buildings and docks), the railway stations, the power station, Gosport, local barracks, Vospers Shipbuilders in the Camber, and also the Airspeed Factory at the Airport.

171 people were killed on the night of 10 and 11 January 1941. Portsmouth was chosen as a target that night as the rest of Britain was covered by thick cloud, and Portsmouth – on the coast – was the only readily identifiable target. German records show that 153 Bombers targeted Portsmouth. This compares drastically with the ‘1,000 Bomber’ raids launched by Bomber Command on Germany later in the war.

Many victims were unidentified due to their terrible injuries, and im some cases virtually nothing remained of their bodies. Hundreds of victims were buried in a mass funeral in Kingston Cemetery in the city. A memorial stands near to the site of their mass grave. Over 1,000 people died in Portsmouth as a result of Bombing during the Second World War. Many records state that 930 civilians were killed, but a number of servicemen were also killed whilst on leave or while on duty in the city. Just under 10% of the cities 63,000 houses were destroyed, and a similar number seriously damaged.

German records state that 40,000 4lb incendiary bombs were dropped on the city on that one night alone, as well as 140 tons of High Explosive. Many bombs did land in the sea – the Solent, and Portsmouth and Langstone Harbours. In 1940 Bombing from the air was not an exact science. The Bombers followed radio beams that interescted over Southsea Common. The incendicaries caused over 2,314 fires – far too many for beleagured emergency services to deal with at any one time, especially given that 60 water mains had been destroyed. The tide was also low, which prevented the Fire Brigade from pumping water from the sea.

47 people were died when an air raid shelter at Arundel Street School suffered a direct hit. The power station was hit, and the main shopping centres at Commercial Road, Palmerston Road and Kings Road were all decimated. Also damaged were the Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital, the Hippodrome, Clarence Pier, three cinemas, the dockyard school, the Royal Sailors Rest Home, the Salvation Army Citadel, the Central Hotel and the Connaught Drill Hall. The FA Cup – won by Pompey in 1939 – was dug out of a Bank in Commercial Road, where it had been placed for safekeeping.

The most visible and symbolic material loss was the destruction of the Guildhall. ARP and emergency services battled fires in the building all night, but one 4lb incendiary bomb fell down a ventilation shaft and lodged itself in an inacessible place, proving impossible to extinguish. The Guildhall burnt all night and into the next day, the melting copper from the ornate dome dripping down to the ground. When the fires finally subsided only the outer walls remained. When the basement was dug out however the Lord Mayor’s chain and civic plate were found to be intact.

I’ve always found it a mystery why the Luftwaffe didn’t target Portsmouth more during the War. Situated on the coast and with the Isle of Wight to the south harbours to either side it should have been relatively easy to locate from the air, certainly easier than many of the inland cities that were targeted. Granted, most of the large naval ships didn’t use Portsmouth during the war for fear of air attack, but there was still a sizeable dockyard and a plethora of naval training establishments. Portsmouth was strongly defended by Anti-Aircraft Guns however – on Hayling Island, along the crest of Portsdown Hill, and on Southsea Common, where there were also rocket batteries. There were also many barrage balloons. Naval ships in harbour would also open up their AA guns. ARP precautions in Portsmouth were also advanced, as the authorities expected the city to be heavily targeted.

The ‘myth of the blitz’ that I have written about previously has also pervaded over Portsmouth’s experience. There were incidents of looting, recorded in the local court records. Many people also left the city each night and ‘trekked’ out of the city, over Portsdown Hill. They were criticised for leaving their homes vulnerable to incendiary bombs. But on the whole morale held surprisingly well. The Lord Mayor of Portsmouth Denis Daley (no relation) wrote:

“We are bruised but we are not daunted, and we are still as determined as ever to stand side by side with other cities who have felt the blast of the enemy, and we shall, with them, persevere with an unflagging spirit towards a conclusive and decisive victory”

Whilst Portsmouth and many other cities in Britain were hit extremely hard during the war, it is important that we keep the impact of strategic bombing in context. More people were killed in one night in Dresden in 1945 than were killed in the whole of Britain during the war years. Cities such as Hamburg, Cologne and Berlin were also devastated. Further afield Tokyo was virtually obliterated. This is not to belittle the suffering of people in Portsmouth, but only to say that other cities in the world suffered even more. Colleagues of mine have in the past come in for a lot of criticism for stating that Portsmouth got off quite lightly compared to Hamburg and Dresden.

The Blitz also hardened the attitudes of many. Later in the war hundreds of young men from Portsmouth were killed bombing cities in the Third Reich and occupied Europe. A number of them died on missions to bomb Duisburg in the Ruhr, which would later become Portsmouth’s twin city. In the famous words of ‘Bomber’ Harris ‘The Germans entered this war with the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and that nobody was going to bomb them. They sowed the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind’. Such an attitude is probably indicative of public opinion on the home front during the war. People who had endured the blitz were unlikely to be too concerned about the fate of German cities when their turn came.

My Grandad can remember a lot from the time of the Blitz. One night he saw a Heinkel fly over so low he could see the pilots blonde hair. On another occasion, he and his sister decided to go the Park instead of the cinema. The cinema was destroyed by a bomb that afternoon. He can also remember having to cut short his paper round as the cemetery had been bombed, and also collecting shrapnel from ack-ack guns. And my favourite memory of his, has to be when a barrage balloon got tangled round the school’s belltower, pulling it down!

It was only really in the 1970’s that Portsmouth was fully reconstructed after the war. It was not even until the 1950’s that the Guildhall was rebuilt. During the war grand plans were made to redesign Portsmouth – in terms of urban planning, roads and whole neighbourhoods – but these had to be curtailed in the Austerity that marked post-war Britain. Never the less, many people were re-homed from the shattered inner-city areas to new estates at Paulsgrove and Leigh Park, or new high rise blocks in Somers Town, Buckland, Portsea and Landport.

I have been disappointed with the media coverage of the anniversary. BBC1’s Inside Out gave a measly 10 minutes to the subject (mind you if it had been about Southampton we could have expected an hour long special). Inside Out even featured a local ‘historian’ I’ve never heard of – Portsmouth isn’t a massive place, and there arent too many historians here!

For more information about the Portsmouth Blitz, have a look at John Stedman’s excellent Portsmouth Paper ‘Portsmouth Reborn: Destruction and Reconstruction 1941-1974′, Andrew Whitmarsh’s ‘Portsmouth at War’, and also ‘City at War’ by Nigel Peake. ‘Smitten City’ by the Portsmouth News is also a fantastic publication full of images of Portsmouth during the war.

As Britain’s premier naval port, Portsmouth was naturally a prominent target for the Luftwaffe. Although major warships such as aircraft carriers and battleships rarely used the dockyard in wartime due to the fear of air attack, much work repairing smaller vessels still went on in the yard.

The Germans were well aware of the importance of Portsmouth. A folio of maps in Portsmouth Central Library’s Local History section shows that the Luftwaffe had identified targets all over Portsmouth – the Dockyard, the Power Station, Gunwharf, Vospers Shipyard in the Camber, Fratton Goods Yard, the Airport, the Airspeed Factory, the Gasometer, the military barracks at Hilsea, and Hilsea Railway Bridge. Across the water, HMS Dolphin at Gosport was also a target.

Clearly, such a large target needed considerable Anti-Aircraft Defences. The principal defence came in the form of the 57th (Wessex) Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment of the Royal Artillery. The 57th was a Territorial unit, made up mainly of men who had volunteered to be part-time soldiers before the war and had been mobilised upon the start of the war. 213 battery recruited from Portsmouth, 214 Battery from Southsea, 215 Battery from Gosport and Fareham, and 219 Battery from the Isle of Wight and Cosham.

There were a number of Anti-Aircraft Gun emplacements around Portsmouth. Recent features and letters in the news have pointed to both Gun and Rocket Batteries on Southsea Common. My Grandad can also remember the naval ships in harbour using their anti-aircraft guns too. Anti-Aircraft fire was not just about actually trying to attack aircraft, but also to try and put up such a volume of fire that the pilots were forced away from the target. It also boosted the morale of civilians, who were cheered to see that someone was attempting to hit back on their behalf.

But the most considerable defences seem to have been located around the outskirts of the ciy, in order to catch the attackers as they were either approaching or leaving the target area. As Bob Hunt’s Portsdown Tunnels shows, there were gun sites north of Fort Nelson at Monument Farm, south of Southwick, and near Crookhorn. It was felt at the time that the Luftwaffe was using the white chalkface of Portsdown Hill to guide its planes to the area, so basing flak guns over the reverse slopes would have given the gunners a fair chance of downing Dorniers and Heinkels.

There was also a considerable anti-aircraft emplacement at Sinah Warren on the very south-western tip of Hayling Island. The site at Sinah is particularly interesting. It was located on the edge of a decoy site. A number of sites were set up around the country, in order to lure the Luftwaffe away from bombing large urban centres such as Portsmouth. They achieved this by lighting dummy fires, and two bunkers for dummy fires can still be found on Farlington Marshes. The Langstone Harbour site was particularly succesful. After the massive bombing raid on Portsmouth on 10/11 January 1941, the next large raid on Portsmouth was largely foiled by the decoy site, and most of the German bombs fell harmlessly into Langstone Harbour.

Sadly, some of the anti-aircraft gunners at Sinah Warren paid the ultimate price for their closeness to the decoy site. Several bombs fell on the gun emplacement, killing five men. One man died of his wounds later. All were serving with 219 Battery, 57 Heavy AA Regiment:

Gunner James Bardoe, of Northfleet in Kent
Gunner James Collingbine, of Plaistow in London
Gunner Arthur Farmer, of Portsmouth
Gunner Reginald Knight, 21 and from Wymering
Gunner Leonard Ward, 22 and from Carisbrooke on the Isle of Wight
Gunner James Powell, 28 and from Middlesex (died on the 19th of wounds)

After the threat of air attack receded when the Germans turned on Russia, 57 HAA Regiment was drafted to serve overseas. After going to North Africa in 1942, the Regiment finished the war in Italy. There is a plaque at the Sinah Warren site commemorating the 6 gunners killed in April 1941, and there is an example of the kind of gun the Regiment would have used outside the D-Day Museum, complete with the unit’s ‘flaming Dornier’ emblem.

A total of 48 men were killed serving with 57 HAA Regiment during the war. They are buried in Britain, South Africa, Israel, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Crete and Italy.